Shadows Against the Empire

by Ralph Vaughan

  And then he saw a familiar face close to his.

  “Chief Inspector Slaughter,” the face said. “Ethan!”

  “You…you’re…Folkestone…”

  Slaughter felt his bonds removed, the hands of many people helping him to his feet.

  “Captain…yes, I remember…Folkestone.”

  “Slaughter, can you stand?” Folkestone demanded.

  “Yes, I think so,” Slaughter replied.

  “Commander Drummond, SAS, very pleased to see you, Chief Inspector,” the leader of the commandos said. “You know Captain Folkestone, and this is Lieutenant Burke.”

  “Very pleased to meet you all.” His voice faded.

  “We have to get out of here, sir,” Burke said.

  “Agreed,” said Drummond. “Assign two men to escort the Chief Inspector back to the airship. We still need to connect with the other team and finish this sweep.”

  Slaughter felt strong hands grip him, lift him, guide him. He struggled free of them and grasped Folkestone by the tunic.

  Folkestone did not resist his grasp.

  “They asked me about you, Folkestone, demanded to know what you knew about them, what we know of them, but I told them nothing, no matter what they did,” Slaughter babbled.

  “It’s over, Slaughter, you’re safe,” Folkestone said, breaking the man’s grip as gently as he could. “We received the message you dropped from that airship. The tide has turned against them all over, and we have done them in here.”

  “The message…” Slaughter sighed. “So long ago.” Then his eyes shot wide and he gripped Folkestone again. “Did you get him? You must take him. He is the key, the leader, the man the Dark God wears like a suit of clothes!”

  “Calm yourself, Chief Inspector,” Burke urged. He looked to the others, shook his head, and muttered: “He’s gone stark ravers.”

  “The Martian!” Slaughter gasped. “The dreaming Martian!”

  “No, wait!” Folkestone cried. “Daraph-Kor? You’re talking about Daraph-Kor?”

  “Yes!”

  “You’ve talked to Daraph-Kor?”

  “Talked to the bleeding Martian?” Slaughter cried. “He has been in my mind, showed me blood and terror and fire…but I have been in his too, the cheeky blighter!”

  Burke ordered his men to take Slaughter to the waiting airship, but the man from Scotland Yard resisted with a strength all found astonishing.

  “You have to find the Martian!” Slaughter insisted. “If he flees, it all begins anew. His lair. Find the chamber from which he sends out the dreams, the deadly dreams! The City of the Maze! In the Black Mirror he stares, communing with nightmares! Break the Black Mirror! Danger waits in the City of the Maze! Monsters!”

  Then it was as if all the strength fled him, and he sagged in the grips of those holding him. His head lolled. Folkestone felt for a pulse and sighed when he found it, faint but steady.

  “Take him to the airship,” Burke ordered. “Now!”

  Folkestone started for the door.

  “Captain, where are you going?” Drummond demanded.

  “I have to find Daraph-Kor.”

  “Daraph-Kor…” Slaughter murmured dreamily.

  “Simmons, you and…”

  “No, Commander, I’m better off on my own,” Folkestone interrupted. “Carry out your orders.’

  “Now that we have Slaughter, my orders are to link up with Wedlake’s team, take our prisoners and documents, and leave,” the Commander said. “We can’t wait for you for too long.”

  “Don’t wait,” Folkestone said as he reloaded his weapons. “You have your orders, and I have mine.”

  They exited the dungeon.

  “Sir!” cried a soldier, careening into the corridor. “They’re dead, all dead!”

  “Talk sense, man!” Drummond growled.

  “Who is dead?” Burke demanded.

  “The people we saw in them dream-spice rooms, they just stopped living, all of them,” the soldier gasped. “And those we was trying to take prisoner, they all died, just died!”

  “Daraph-Kor is cleaning house!” Folkestone gasped as he fled the dungeon.

  “Good luck, Captain!” Drummond called to his back.

  “Tell Sergeant Hand I’ll see him in London.”

  During their sweep downward from the roof in search of Chief Inspector Slaughter the SAS had investigated as many rooms as possible, but there had been no way to cover them all. Folkestone moved down one of the passages they had not explored. The House of Wands was again silent, but it was not the silence of stealth but the quietude of death.

  After hearing of Slaughter’s experiences with Daraph-Kor, Folkestone no longer doubted the veracity of the theory he and Hand had discussed on the airship. Somehow, one of the Dark Gods, banished from this dimension in a primal age, had reached out to poor Daraph-Kor, had called him away from his life, and had usurped his body. Slaughter was in bad shape from his ordeal, but he was lucid enough about the importance of taking Daraph-Kor, and Folkestone agreed wholeheartedly. If the possessed Martian managed to escape, there was no telling where in the Solar System he would next appear.

  But what to make of Slaughter’s remarks about a Black Mirror and the City of the Maze?

  Death was everywhere in the rooms he checked. The lives that had been ended by their own bloody hands were the easiest to explain, the easiest to accept. He and Hand had run against fanatics before in their missions, both religious and political, so it was no great mystery when followers of a strong personality, faced with either the dissolution of dreams or the despair of defeat, drank poison or spilled open their guts.

  But there were many more followers who were just…dead. Men and women; human, Martian, and Venusian; all the many races and of all ages – they lay were they fell, no marks on their bodies beyond the masks of terror they wore. They had taken the dream-spice, had turned their dreams over to the Dark God in Daraph-Kor’s skin, and he had transformed those dreams into weapons of their own destruction. They would not betray any secrets.

  Folkestone stiffened and dropped to one knee at the edge of an open doorway. A muffled sound had come from the unlit end of the corridor, stealthy footfalls. He edged the muzzle of his weapon and one eye around the corner. He relaxed somewhat when the source of the sounds eased cautiously into view.

  “Hand, over here,” Folkestone called softly.

  “Thought that was you, sir,” Hand said. “You all right?”

  Folkestone nodded, then took in Hand’s appearance. “Good Lord, Hand. Not any of your blood is that?”

  “Some scarlet, but not much, sir,” Hand replied. “Ran into a spot of trouble, we did.”

  “Fun?”

  Hand thought seriously. “I did my ancestors proud.”

  “What about this corridor?” Folkestone asked, gesturing the way from which Hand had come. “I take it you’ve already searched these rooms.”

  “Chambers filled with death,” Hand reported grimly. “Death with no honour, ignoble death.” He paused. “But there is one room you need to take a look at.”

  As they walked along the passage, Folkestone asked: “What are you doing here, Hand? Drummond was supposed to take you back to London.”

  “So he told me,” Hand confirmed. “Your orders, he said.”

  “And?”

  Hand rolled his eyes upward and shook his head. “I figured you probably got yourself coshed in the fight and were delirious. I couldn’t possibly follow orders from someone maybe mental.” Folkestone started to protest, but the Sergeant interrupted: “With all due respect, sir, you must be out of your bloody nut if you think I’m going to leave you here with that lunatic Martian running around.”

  “Slaughter was conscious again?”

  “Naw, the bloke is lucky to be alive after what they done to him,” Hand said. “Drummond told…” He paused at a doorway. “This is it, Captain.”

  The room was hung with strange tapestries and obscure signs were everywhere. It was
richly appointed, opulent even, but there was an eerie quality to the room that transcended furnishings or even the heavy hint of dream-spice in the air. Folkestone noted the quality to Hand.

  Hand nodded in agreement. “If you was a Martian, sir, this here room would creep you out proper, and likely give you night-terrors for a month. It’s done up in the manner of the time when the Dark Gods ruled Mars, the pictures, the symbols, all of it. A bit like you walking into an old house and seeing black cats, headless lords, and devil dogs ready to rip you to pieces.”

  “This must have been where Daraph-Kor held court, did all his hoodoo and such.” Folkestone went to a portion of the room that was set apart and shrouded, but unaccountably vacant. “What do you think he had here, Hand?”

  “Whatever it was, he didn’t want no one to see it, judging by the panels and hangings, “ Hand said. “And it was important enough to take with him when he left.”

  Folkestone considered the size of the space, the marks in the dust on the floor. “Ever hear of anything called a Black Mirror?”

  “Black Mirror?”

  “Slaughter might have been delusional when he mentioned it, but I don’t think so.”

  Hand frowned. “Once, long time ago, but it’s pretty vague. In the highland village where I was born there was this old geezer named…let’s see…yeah, name was Rodgo-Mevwa. Lived alone out by some ruins. Had always been there, far as anyone knew. Made a living of mixing potions and reading palms…you know how it is those dorps, closest they come to civilisation is when the tax collector comes through, or a wandering priest marries all the lads and lasses who have been hand-fasting. Well, he also told stories and one of them had something to do about a Black Mirror.”

  “Do you recall anything of it?”

  “It was an old story, he said, way back even before the Dark Gods or the Canal Builders, back to when vast shadows walked among the stars, or so he claimed,” Hand recalled. “He said that the gods of air and light walked between the spaces through the mirrors that were black, that they could reach out and drag children into the screaming void.” Hand shrugged. “It did not make no sense to me then, sir, but I admit it was all of a double-month afore I could get near a mirror and not fear that something was going to reach out and drag me in.” He grinned sheepishly at the confession. “Sorry to not be more help than that.”

  “No, it makes a bit of sense, from what little we know, don’t you think?” Folkestone said, touching his chin contemplatively.

  “A mirror, sir?”

  “Not a mirror as we think of it, but a transportation system that can move one from one place to another through dimensional spaces. In one Black Mirror and out another…yes, both our races would think of such beings as gods of air and light.”

  “Or darkness,” Hand added.

  Folkestone nodded.

  “I suppose so, but how does it figure in this?”

  “If two or more of those Black Mirrors is a transportation system, then one is…”

  “A trap,” Hand finished. “But like old Rodgo-Mevwa said, it was still possible for something to reach out and get you.”

  “Just as something reached out and grabbed Daraph-Kor,” the Captain mused.

  “If he wanted to get his mates out of that ancient pokey, he’d have to keep it near, protect it,” Hand pointed out. “But now it’s gone, if that is even what was here, along with Daraph-Kor. And we’ve no idea where.”

  Running footfalls sounded in the passage and a voice called out their names. They stepped out of the room and saw Hawkins.

  “Commander Drummond’s orders,” he gasped breathlessly. “Report to the airship immediately!”

  They ran with the young soldier, down the corridors and up the stairs to the rooftop where the airship was starting to lift. One step on board, and the airship shot away, speeding west.

  “There was another aethership at Kanaris that Station T knew nothing about,” Drummond reported. “It blasted its way out of the yards, a ship shaped like a black manta-ray.”

  “Bugger!” Hand exclaimed.

  “Black Ray is at the helm,” Folkestone said, “And it’s a sure bet Daraph-Kor and the Black Mirror are aboard.”

  “Where is that ship now, sir?” Hand asked.

  “We believe it is bound for Mars,” Drummond said. “We have notified the Royal Space Navy to intercept and destroy, but it is more than likely they will slip past.”

  “We have to give chase, Commander,” Folkestone cried. “It is imperative we catch Daraph-Kor before he vanishes from view.”

  “Not in this airship unfortunately,” Drummond replied. “Air operations only, not aether-fitted.”

  “But we must…”

  Drummond held up a silencing palm. “Already being taken care of, Captain. We are conveying the two of you to Piraeus at our best speed, and then some. Our embassy has already contacted Greece requesting assistance. King George II has a fast aethership and his personal pilot already waiting.”

  Sergeant Hand snorted happily. “God bless Lord Byron!”

  “There is one other thing, Sergeant Hand,” Drummond said.

  “Sir?”

  “A trip to the loo might be in order.”

  “Off to it, Sergeant,” Folkestone snapped, grinning. “You look like a badly carved Christmas roast…and a very rare one at that!”

  Chapter 18

  Folkestone would like to have met the son of Lord Byron but there was no time. The HMAS Nemesis swooped down on the port that served Athens just long enough to eject Folkestone and Hand, then resumed its journey to London. Likewise, the two men did not tarry at the Piraeus Aetherport, but boarded their loaned ship and leaped into the vaulted heavens.

  “Blimey, sir!” Sergeant Hand exclaimed when they were escorted aboard the Agamemnon. “I’d be afraid to pass wind on a ship like this.”

  Folkestone glanced about at the rich appointments, the silver and bronze metalwork formed in classic Hellenic designs, the rich dark woods, the thickly cushioned chairs. It was, he had to admit, definitely a ship fit for a king. But there was also no denying it had been built for speed and combat, which such winged aether-engines as would have made Daedalus proud and weapons of destruction that could easily have flowed from the mind of Archimedes.

  Their pilot was a young man with tangled black hair named Lieutenant Krios. Rather than being Titan-like, however, he was not very much taller than Sergeant Hand, was lean of limb, and had a mischievous glint in his grey eyes as might have been found in the lights of crafty Odysseus.

  The aethership was of an open bay design. Although there were two private compartments, a W.C., and a galley aft, there was no true bridge, the main saloon flowing into the control area. As the repulsors engaged and they lifted from its berth, Folkestone and Hand rushed to stand behind Krios, holding onto leather straps bolted to the bulkhead.

  Krios sat in a command chair designed after the throne that had been unearthed in sandy Pylos where wise Nestor held court. The aethership’s instrumentation was arrayed about him in a perfect semicircle, and the crystalline screen covered almost the entire bow, held in a lattice of vine-like metal ribbons, giving the impression of the pilot floating in space.

  “Cor,” Hand muttered after taking in the vista of vastness, then wandered back into the main saloon.

  Folkestone smiled thinly.

  “Your friend, he okay, sir?” Krios asked. “The little fellow, he looks…well, green.”

  “Sergeant Hand will be fine,” Folkestone assured the pilot. “Been quite a week.”

  “He something of a… How you say in English?” The young man frowned, then brightened. “Landlubber?”

  Folkestone chuckled, leaned forward a bit, and murmured, “I think you could safely say that, though Hand would argue it.”

  Krios nodded sagely. “It comes from Martians not having oceans, just canals. A race not seafaring cannot be truly spacefaring. It is why Martian interplanetary trade rides on the coattails of the Empire.”
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  “You know, Krios, Mars did have rather vast oceans long ago,” Folkestone pointed out. “Epic songs are still sung of the times of the Martian Sea-Kings.”

  Krios made a vague dismissive motion with his hand while still manipulating the controls with a dexterity difficult to follow. “The seas, they dried up…”

  “Actually, they were…”

  “Or whatever,” Krios continued. “The point is they vanished and when the siren of the sea falls silent, the urge to smote the oars against the sounding furrows fades, and with it that desire to catch the ever-receding horizon or sail the baths of all the western stars.”

  Folkestone’s eyes crinkled as he thought of all the bards and story-singers from whom this lad descended, all the gimlet-eyed mariners who sailed far from shore and dared approach any island upon the sea, be it home to Gorgons or Cyclopae or a woman whose love could transform men into swine. He glanced back at Hand and considered there might be something to Krios’ words.

  “After all, Greeks were first into space,” Krios continued.

  “I am not a historian,” Folkestone said, “but I am fairly sure Italy lays credible claim to that honour. In fact, Pope Paul V himself blessed Galileo’s first…”

  “Nai, nai,” Krios agreed, “but his pilot, he was Demetrius of Ithika, and he sat at the front of…”

  “Your point is well taken, lad…”

  Krios beamed brighter than Helios rising.

  “You know we are trying to catch…” Folkestone started.

  “Yes, sir, the manta-ship that fled Constantinople,” Krios said. “I have only general coordinates, but I am monitoring all the frequencies, military and civilian. Do not worry, sir, we will run this favlos…this villain to ground.”

  “Good man,” Folkestone said, patting him on the shoulder. “I will be in the back, talking to Sergeant Hand. Please inform me immediately of any developments.”

  Krios nodded, and Folkestone turned away, leaving the young space-mariner to his own personal Argonautica to the stars.